Research

Interests

Stef Conner’s creative practice – which involves drawing new music out of ancient texts – is closely intertwined with her ongoing research into the reconstruction of lost oral musical traditions. During her doctorate, her focus was generating musical material from the study of language, and the complementary relationship between music and language as means of communicating across large expanses of time – centuries and longer. In her current research, which grew out of these parallel interests in music and language, she seeks to bring together the fields of creative practice, comparative musicology, music archaeology, poetics and linguistics in order to establish new methods for the reconstruction of ancient vocal music. She believes passionately in the value of responding creatively to scholarship in ancient music so that lost traditions can inspire and enlighten people in ways that are both accessible and intellectually stimulating.

Current Research

Stef fortunate to be a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, researching the performance of ancient Mesopotamian words with reconstructed ancient instruments.

Published Conference Papers

OTSFFebruary 16–20, 2014

‘The Score of Babylon – Outline of a Framework for Reconstructing Ancient Songs’, the Old Temples Study Foundation: Archaeoacoustics: the Archaeology of Sound, Malta. Read the publication here.

cepure2October 16–18, 2013

Early Words to Late Music – The Value of Practice-led Research in Composition as a Companion to the Analysis of Old English Poetic Metre’, Principles of Music Composing – the Phenomenon of Rhythm, Vilnius, Lithuania.